Static Top Alone Activities
Static Top Alone activities are those during which an individual student or a teacher uses only one language. The teacher is likely to use the school language when he or she explains classroom content while students can use either the school language or their home language for various purposes of learning. An individual student, for example, can read a book in school language or do a monolingual worksheet alone. Static top alone activities are commonly practiced in most schools and these are likely to be more challenging to bi/multilingual students than monolingual students as bi/multilingual students cannot use only part of their language resources (one language out of more than one) while suppressing a significant part of their language resources (the languages that are not used during these activities). Static Top Alone activities, therefore, need to be balanced with Spinning Top Alone and Together activities. It is beneficial to do Spinning Top activities before Static Top activities as the former tends to be easier than the latter.
Monolingual worksheet for grade 4 Math
Each student was asked to write on how to read time. This student has confusion in what the number pointed by the long needle means. Then the student needs to clarify how to calculate the minutes by the number indicated by the long needle with the help from peers using their home language.
Monolingual worksheet for grade 4 Science
Each student was asked to draw the different shapes of the moon throughout the whole month.
Monolingual instruction in school language (Thai)
The teacher explained how to play a bingo game in the school language.
Monolingual worksheet
The table shows the number of male and female students from kindergarten 1 to grade 6 in the students' school. This worksheet activity was followed by Spinning Top Together activities for data collection.
Monolingual worksheet in English
Each student read the words and cut and pasted the appropriate word in each blank. This activity may be done after TPR for listening body parts and TPR with word flash cards.
Monolingual worksheet on categorization of living things
Each student chose the appropriate names of living things for each category of animals, plants, and non-animal/non-plants. If some students do not know all of the names of living things in the school language such as Thai, then let them have a chance to express their doubts to their peers who may know the names and tell them their meaning in their home language.
Static Top Together Activities
Static Top Together activities are those during which the teacher and students interact together using the school language or when students work together using only one language. For example, a group of students or a pair of students present their group work before the class using the school language so that both the teacher and students from other home language backgrounds can understand. However, the teacher always needs to be sensitive about whether students are learning properly with this one school language and whether they are limited in showing their true skills and knowledge by this school language only. If students find learning and expressing their knowledge using only school language challenging, then the teacher shifts his or her strategies by encouraging students to use all of their language resources to learn deeper and show their skill more fully.
Monolingual Whiteboard Writing and Reading Together
Teacher wrote a Math problem on the whiteboard in the school language (Thai) and the whole class read and clarified the problem using the school language.
Class interaction in a School Language Between Teacher and Students
The teacher used a school language to explain a topic in grade 4 Science class and students responded using the same school language.
Group Presentation in the School Language
A group of students presented their group work before the class using the school language so that the teacher and students with other home language background can understand the content delivered in the common school language.
Spinning Top Alone Activities
Spinning Top Alone activities are those during which an individual student is using all of his or her language resources, such as the school and home languages together. A student, for example, uses a bilingual dictionary or glossary, does a multilingual worksheet, or pre-writes in a language and writes in another language.
Multilingual Glossary Worksheet for Words
An individual student wrote down different verbs in the school language, their own home language and their friends' home language in Thai language class for grade 3.
The teacher prepared the worksheet in a way that students may show interest and respect for other students' languages, as building a healthy community among the student body is in the interest of the school. This school has students from 4 different home language backgrounds.
Multilingual Worksheet for Sentences
An individual student wrote sentences in English, Thai (medium of instruction) and the student's home language in English class while describing the locations of the ball in relation to the box (Grade 4).
Bilingual Writing
A student wrote a summary of a Science lesson in her home and school languages. In terms of the order of languages, the students tend to write first in the language they feel more confident in and then in the other language. The student in the picture wrote in her home language (Sgaw Karen) first and then in Thai. Another student wrote in Thai first followed by her home language (Grade 4).
Pre-writing in the Home Language & Writing in the School Language
A grade 5 student pre-wrote in her home language about the different kinds of cooking in her, wrote more polished ideas in the school language Thai, and submitted the Thai writing to the teacher (Thai language/grade 5).
Bilingual math problem on the board
A student came up front and wrote an applied Math problem in both the school language and home languages (Spinning Top Alone) and solved it on the white board. While the student wrote the problem in both languages, the whole class read and wrote the problem in both languages on their notebook and solved it at the same time (Spinning Top Together).
Bilingual worksheet
A Science teacher prepared a bilingual worksheet on the key terms about the rising and falling of the Moon. He asked a teacher who speaks the same home language as students to elicit 20 key terms in students' home language and prepared matching worksheet between Thai and the home language.
Bilingual worksheet in Math
This bilingual worksheet asks an individual student to read the numbers in words for 3 decimal places and write in Arabic numbers in school and home languages. The teacher could further teach students how to read differently and similarly across the two languages.
Bilingual worksheet on solar system
Each student read yes/no questions in the school language and wrote the reasons in Thai for those questions whose answers are no. Furthermore, they summarized what they learned about the solar system in both the school (blue) and home (red) language at the end of the worksheet. Through the strategy of writing the same summary in two languages, they processed the content deeper and had a chance to develop academic language in both languages.
Trilingual worksheet
An individual student was asked to fill in the blanks from the right choice of word from the word box. Notice that the instruction was given in Thai as the students' English performance is not good enough to understand English instructions. The expression for each symptom was given in Thai and students' home language below each blank both to avoid any confusion from the picture and to make sure students learn all the expression in 3 languages.
Spinning Top Together Activities
Spinning top together activities are those that students with the same home language background work together using all of their language resources including the same home language feature as part of all their language resources. Students can learn best and show (their) true knowledge when encouraged to utilize all of their language resources.
Using both home and school languages and writing in the school language
Students were grouped together according to their common home language. They were encouraged to use all of their language resources to discuss orally (Spinning Top Together) and wrote down the result of their discussion in the school language, Thai (Static Top Together).
Presentation in school language while helping one another using home language
A group of students presented about their group discussion before class in school language-Thai, while helping one another using their home language during the presentation (Spinning Top Together).
Presenting numbers in words in both school and home languages
A Math teacher prepared flash cards for Arabic numbers and numbers in both school and home languages in advance and displayed on the white board. The whole class learned how to read the numbers bigger than 100,000 in both school and home languages and compared the difference between the two languages on how to read them (Spinning Top Together).
Presenting bilingual chart
A couple of students presented their pair work on the different ways to save money. They were given four pictures about savings and the corresponding flash cards to match between the two. They were also encouraged to write the terms for the kinds of saving in their home language.
During the presentation of their bilingual chart, they spoke in Thai loudly for the whole class to listen and at the same time helped each other by whispering in their home language (Grade 4 Thai class).
Teacher's summary of students' presentations
While different pairs of students presented their group work on the different ways of saving as in the example on the right, the teacher wrote down the key terms of the kinds of saving in both school (first column in the picture above and home language of students (2nd and 3rd columns). Interestingly, some pair groups came up with different terms for two ways of saving (the 3rd column). The teacher asked why they decided to choose the terms differently from other groups and learned the reasoning process from the students. This example shows that the"teacher as a co-learner" along with students "co-build the knowledge" together, making the translanguaging classroom a more "democratic" environment.
Bilingual word wall as a result of group work
A group of students from the same home language background worked on sorting out various animals according to 5 different categories such as fish, amphibia, reptiles, etc. in both school (blue, Thai) and home (red, Sgaw Karen) languages. The students had a chance to process the Thai key terms (5 category names) using their home language and came up with their own expressions/terms for each category. In this way, they were able to process and understand the difficult academic terms. After making the bilingual word wall, it was displayed on the classroom walls while learning the unit.
An applied math problem making and solving as a group
Each group of same home language speaking students designed an applied math problem in both school (first line) and home languages (second line) and solved it together using all of their language resources. As different students have different knowledge levels of their home language, school language, math problem solving skills, creativity, etc., they were able to help one another with their unique strength in the group freely using both home and school languages.
Multiple choice questions from home to school language
A teacher prepared a list of multiple choice questions on various key terms that are used for the topic of the solar system in Science grade 4. He pre-typed the terms in the students' home language as in the quote in the question and asked how those home language terms are called in school language. Students were supposed to choose from the four choices in school language. In this picture the key term was "midnight". 13 students out of 15 chose the right answer.
Home language presentation using different Thai names of planets in home language default sentences
The teacher encouraged the presenting students to use their home language in addition to Thai in order to explain the different planets in the solar system, which planet they like most and why they do so. When they were also using their home language during presentation, the presentation was more natural and rich and the audience was also more attentive with smiles on their faces. The teacher who did not fully understand students' home language asked one of students sitting at the back of the classroom about the content of the presentation and tried to learn some basic expressions of the students' home language.
Bilingual worksheet for individual students while discussing using all of their language resources
A pair of students were working on individual bilingual worksheets while discussing about the content using both school and home languages. The worksheet is on how to read number in words of the 3 decimal places and write in Arabic numbers, in school and home languages.
Data collection from school language information using all of their language resources
Students were collecting data about the number of male and female students from kindergarten 1 to grade 6 of their school from the information board, hung on the doors of each classroom, written in school language while clarifying any doubt about data collection among themselves using all of their language resources. See how they presented their data in the form of both one way and two ways tables in the Static Top Alone activities (the forth activity).
Group presentation of bilingual chart
Each group presented their group work on examples of action words in both school and home languages for the same meaning. Students are from 4 different home language groups. They had a chance to hear how their friends' home language is pronounced and had fun.
Letting a student with better understanding explain to their friends
It was a moment when just a few students understood the concept of subtracting numbers higher than 100,000 when the teacher explained it in the school language, Thai. So the teacher asked a student with a clear understanding of her instruction to explain it to other students who did not understand yet using both the school language, Thai and their home language, Pow Karen. While this student was helping her peers, the teacher was able to move to other groups to do the same.
Reading text in school language, Thai and clarifying and discussion in home language
Students read a Thai information text together on the different types of sentences such as declarative, command, question, etc. and clarified any doubts using their home language and discussed how to present their understanding in both Thai and home language as in the next video clip on the right hand side column.
Chorus reading in school language and oral chorus translation in home language
Students agreed upon how to explain the Thai information text about different sentence types in their home language, read the Thai text aloud and told the meaning of each item in home language.